Oracle Cost-Based Optimizer Basics

Randolf Geist on 10 April 2012 with 0 comments

This video and set of resources is a follow up to the webinar broadcast by Red Gate on 11 Apr 2012. The video above is accompanied by the following downloadable resources: Read me Presentation slides – PDF version Presentation slides – PowerPoint version Screenshots – Demo 1 (.pdf) Screenshots – Demo 2 (.pdf) Screenshots – Demo 3 (.pdf) optimizer_basics_inter_table_clustering_testcase.sql optimizer_basics_join_cardinality_testcase.sql… Continue Reading →

The String Puzzle

Cary Millsap on 30 March 2012 with 5 comments

A piece of string is stretched tightly around the Earth along its equator. Imagine that this string along the equator forms a perfect circle, and imagine that to reach around that perfect circle, the string has to be exactly 25,000 miles long. Now imagine that you wanted to suspend this string 4 inches above the surface of the Earth, all… Continue Reading →

Building Apex Plugins 101

Martin Giffy DSouza on 28 March 2012 with 0 comments

Martin Giffy D’Souza has created some of the most popular plug-ins available on the APEX plug-in community page. He has learned a lot about the architecture and what it takes to make a robust plug-in. In this video, Martin will help get you started with creating your first APEX plug-in. He will also provide you with some tips and useful… Continue Reading →

APEX Plugin Competition

Peter Raganitsch on 28 March 2012 with 0 comments

The first ODTUG APEX Plugin Competition was launched on Tuesday March 27th 2012). This is a chance for everybody to submit their self created Plugins to get reviewed, judged and maybe win one of the many Prizes available. Plugins will be judged upon skill level of its creator. That means beginners and experts will not be in the same category,… Continue Reading →

ORA-01801: Date Format is too Long for Internal Buffer

Dominic Delmolino on 27 March 2012 with 0 comments

Oracle 10.2.0.1 (I know, version out-of-date) on Windows 2003: The other day one of my stored procedures error’ed out with: ORA-01801: date format is too long for internal buffer somewhere near a line in which I was doing the following assignment: d := to_char(c.date_field,’YYYYMMDD’); Where d is of type varchar2, and c is a row from a cursor for loop,… Continue Reading →

How APEX Processes Various Conditions and Validations

Martin Giffy DSouza on 26 March 2012 with 0 comments

I was recently teaching an Intro to APEX course and the students had some questions about what to put in the Expression 1 text area for different conditions and validations based on the Type selected. If you’re new to APEX the various options can be confusing. To help clear things up I have covered various APEX conditions and validations along with code that demonstrates… Continue Reading →

Method for Huge Diagnostic Information in Exadata

Fahd Mirza on 23 March 2012 with 0 comments

During the management of the Exadata, we have seen numerous incidents ranging from the eviction of the nodes to the hanging cluster and from cooked controllers to bad hard disks. On all the occasions we have been engaged with the My Oracle Support to identify the root cause, which more often than not results in either a known bug or… Continue Reading →

Leaping Frog Puzzle

All Things Oracle on 21 March 2012 with 9 comments

There’s a nice pond near to Red Gate HQ, and now that it’s spring, the place is full of life. The frogs in the pond are the most active, and constantly annoy the old Toad with their agility. The frogs’ latest trick is to form a line of 8, and then leap over each other to end up in 4… Continue Reading →

Dynamic Sampling (II) – Controlling the Activity – Part 2

Randolf Geist on 15 March 2012 with 1 comments

In the first part of this post I’ve provided a table that summarizes the Dynamic Sampling levels on session / system level. In the “Blocks Sampled” column there were numbers in brackets for the level 3 and 4 description. In the second part of this post I’ll explain why. DYNAMIC_SAMPLING_EST_CDN In the presence of statistics Dynamic Sampling behaves differently: For… Continue Reading →

The 40 Most Common Oracle Errors

David Njoku on 12 March 2012 with 12 comments

I have been in this industry long enough to remember the bad old days, when every developer and DBA had a pile of dusty Oracle user guides on their desks and, every time their database or application coughed up an error, would thumb through the books with mounting desperation. Fortunately, the times have moved on and we now all outsource… Continue Reading →